"Sources with first-hand experience of Microsoft's next generation console have told us that although the next Xbox will be absolutely committed to online functionality, games will still be made available to purchase in physical form. Next Xbox games will be manufactured on 50GB-capacity Blu-ray discs, Microsoft having conceded defeat to Sony following its ill-fated backing of the HD-DVD format. It is believed that games purchased on disc will ship with activation codes, and will have no value beyond the initial user." Crap like this should be illegal. If I can't buy second-hand games at my local favourite game store, Microsoft can shove this new Xbox where the sun don't shine. Which it obviously doesn't do in Redmond if they can come up with this kind of user-hostile bullshit. You can pretty much guarantee that they have made a silent agreement with Sony to implement similar anti-user feature on the next Playstation.

Actually, the book publishers would love to get rid of secondhand book sellers. They haven't had luck with physical books, so they are working really hard on ebooks. That's why there are so many stupid drm schemes involved in the ebook world.

On the other hand, it's not really difficult to get DRM-free books, is it? I bought (admittedly all technical) ebooks straight from O'Reilly, Manning, Packtpub and PragProg and none of them use DRM. I can download them in multiple formats (pdf, epub) and use them on any device I like. The only thing that some do, is "personalise" those ebooks. And if you subscribe to their newsletters, it's not that difficult to buy those ebooks with interesting discounts.